After powering through 2/3 of the game in a weekend, I’ve slowly chipped away at God of War ever since. I’m pretty close to the end now, though I currently need to take a break from it to vent my current frustration.
Not that I hate the game or anything. I think it’s pretty fantastic. However, I just passed a part of the game that made me want to rip my hair out. For God of War vets, you probably have a good idea of where I’m going with this. If you haven’t made it this far, I must warn you that there are mild spoilers ahead.
Very late in the game, you end up in Hell, literally and figuratively. While the game has no shortage of moments where it will force you to go from point A to point B under horrible circumstances, I haven’t encountered anything as frustrating as the two cylinders.
The game requires you to climb up these rotating cylinders that spin clockwise and counter-clockwise, depending on which portion of the cylinder you are on. To make things difficult, they’re lined with blades. To make matters worse, you will fall to the bottom if you get hit once. Get clipped when you’re just about to reach the top? Too bad. Down to the bottom you go.
I understand that this is Hell and its supposed to be hard, but there are parts on top of this situation that unfairly amplify the frustration. For one, you’ll have to jump in order to get out of the way of certain blades. The problem is, you oftentimes can’t see far enough above you to know that you’re about to jump head first into a blade, sending you back to the ground. In one instance, the camera wasn’t low enough for me to see a blade clip my feet.
The worst part of this encounter was when the game broke during these sequences, which it did quite a bit. If you’re climbing along the side of the cylinder, and you get pinned between a series of blades and the wall, the blades will actually push you through the wall, which causes you to fall through the world and die. I died so many times because of this one glitch. For a game that is so polished, I can’t believe that an issue as glaring and likely to happen did not get fixed.
I don’t know what happens after this, but hopefully it’s nothing as cheaply frustrating as these cylinders. If it’s smooth sailing from here, look for a final wrap-up of God of War on In Third Person in the near future.
In Third Person 